Good Craic

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So, as many of you know, I left for Ireland on the 11th of March. Here's a day-ish by day-ish account of my time there:

Day One: I flew in to Dublin Airport and then immediately hopped on a bus to Cork, which is in Southern-ish Ireland. Once in Cork, I met up with a guy named Ruairi (which means red-haired in Irish, I believe), and an American guy named Jay from NY. Why did I meet these two humans in particular, you may ask. The answer? www.couchsurfing.com. If you travel often, check it out! It's good, as long as you're careful about it. Anyway, Ruairi was my host for the night, and Jay was also surfing Ruairi's couch.

It was Ruairi's birthday, so we ended up going dancing and hanging out with a bunch of his friends, one of whom apparently looks like Jeff Goldblum (Dr. Malcolm (sp?) in Jurassic Park), so we all called him Jeff Goldblum the rest of the night. Ruairi told me I looked really similar to Alexis Bledel (sp?) (from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Sin City, look her up on www.imdb.com), but I dunno. You decide. Anywho, I had great fun hanging out with all of them, and even acquired a couple of pretend gay best friends for the night (I was telling Alan that I loved gay men because they always tell you you're beautiful and fabulous, so he told me he could be my gay best friend for the night, and he told me I'm beautiful and fabulous :)).

Day 2: Had a traditional Irish breakfast with my Irish friends (and the one American friend). It consisted of mushrooms, baked beans, a fried egg, ham, sausage, and toast. It was pretty good, considering I don't particularly care for mushrooms or baked beans. If you ate them with other things they tasted fine.

Anyway, after that we headed over to Blarney Castle, where I kissed the Blarney Stone! Woot woot! It was crazy going through the castle, because it felt like we just kept going up and up and up. And it looked smaller than it actually was. I have to admit though, actually kissing the Blarney Stone was a little anti-climatic. But definitely worth it, and we have a fun time together, as you can see in the pics :)

Near Blarney Castle are the wishing steps. Legend has it that if you walk up and down them closing your eyes without opening them once and while thinking constantly of your wish, the witch trapped nearby has to grant it. So I did. Which is one of the pics that my American friend Jay so obligingly took.

After Blarney Castle, I hopped on a bus to Galway. The next couple of days will be in the posts to follow!